That's the question Ellen Goodman — a nationally acclaimed author and columnist — asks as she shares her passion for helping people talk about their end-of-life wishes and how it can change the lives of loved ones.

"This is a moment to change the cultural norm from not talking about our end-of-life wishes to talking about them," says Goodman, cofounder of The Conversation Project, a national public engagement campaign working to ensure that end-of-life wishes are expressed and respected and to make it easier to initiate conversations about dying. "We can't wait for doctors to start these conversations. We have to start them at the kitchen table."

Southern Maine Medical Center is presenting an evening with Ellen Goodman at 7 p.m. Aug. 8 in the Kennebunk Town Hall Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public, but seats must be reserved by calling 283-7234. Support for the event is also being provided by Bergen Parkinson Attorneys.

Goodman, who lives in Boston, Mass., and has a summer home near Portland, is a Pulitzer prize-winning columnist, whose column has appeared in more than 300 newspapers. She has covered topics from the women's movement to bioethics.

She became involved in The Conversation Project about three years ago, after she was faced with a number of questions before her mother's death.

"The last several years of her life she was no longer able to make decisions for herself. I was her health care decision maker and I realized that I had to make a cascading number of decisions about really knowing what she wanted and realizing how much easier these roles for all of us would be if we had conversations with the people we love about what they, and we, would want at the end of our lives," Goodman said.

Everybody has a story of a good or hard death among the people they love, Goodman said, and the difference comes down to whether or not they've had the conversation. When stories are shared is when change will start to take place, she said.

The Conversation Project is working with communities from Rhode Island to Hawaii that are working on ways to "become conversation ready," Goodman said, and the project is bringing the conversation to people where they "work, live and pray."

On its website, theconversationproject.org, is a conversation starter kit, which offers information on how to start the conversation and what to say.

"Mostly we are engaged in changing the system from the outside in and making sure the health care system is ready to receive and respect those wishes," Goodman said. "I think we have the capacity to change the way people we love are dying so it's much more in line with the way they wanted."